Rejecting evolutionism and a proper apologetics

Not necessary. Look at human population over time. Hockey stick. Funny, since that is what proved climate change to be a fraud. Anyway, why did it take almost 4000 years to hit one billion and only about 200 to hit 7 billion? Nobody ever wonders about that part.

It is necessary because of Genesis 4:14 where Cain says, “I shall be fugitive and wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will slay me.” So since that happens before Seth was born, it is taking about an earth filled with people when Adam was one hundred and thirty years old. With women only having one child every year that is only going to be 16 thousand people – a small town.

Anyway the point is that you have to alter the story to cram such people into it. Because the Bible only speaks of Adam and Eve having 2 children at that time. Who is Cain afraid of? His parents? And he cannot avoid these two people?

So the sensible reading of the Bible is that the earth is filled with people at the time of Adam and Eve, so Cain and Seth (the children of God) marry the daughters of those other people in the world. And their children (not fairy tale giants born from angels who do not marry) are men of reknown – leaders of human civilization.

I mean its not that I don’t like comic books and fantasy novels about half angelic nephilim, magical fruit, and talking animals. But that is just entertainment. Taking the Bible to be about reality reads a little differently than that.

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How long were Adam and Eve in the garden before they sinned? We don’t know because it doesn’t say. It seems a very short time, but what if they were there for a hundred years or more? Part of God’s pronouncement on them was that children would now come with pain and sorrow. What if it didn’t in the garden?

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Anyway, the bible doesn’t usually list all children, just those in the bloodline that the scriptures follow. How old were Cain and Abel when the murder happened? How fast did children grow then? There was a daughter that Cain married.

It never says there were many people at that time, just that there were others, and all would be brothers, sisters, and sons and daughters who might want to avenge Abel. Possibly, nobody else would have killed at that time, but it seems that those who will commit a crime believe the same of others.

It doesn’t say Adam had Seth 130 years after he sinned, it says Adam had Seth when he was 130 years old and yet that was after Cain killed Abel. Like I said, you have to change the story to make the anti-science version of the story work. Why? Just so you can call God a liar in response to all the data He sends from the earth and sky? Why not accept the Bible as it is written and accept the data God sends us? Because they agree. Both tell us that earth was filled with homo sapiens at the time of Adam and Eve. From science we know there is no “life stuff” to make dust and bone come alive and from the Bible we know that the breath of God is inspiration. So the story fits with evolution better than it does with creationism, just as Christianity fits better with evolution than creationism. That is why the majority of Christianity accepts what science tells us.

Cain seemed to think there were. He thought being a wanderer over the earth would not be traveling through a land empty of people but that he would be in danger of being killed by people wherever he went.

The solution couldn’t be more simple. All those other people were not children of God. That came only through the inspiration of God to Adam and Eve – inspiration which could be shared with others. That is how Jesus can be the second Adam even though He had no children. Being children of God is not about genetics. It is about the word of God coming to us and changing us to be like Him.

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What about the genetic differences between the bear and cat kind? Those differences should be harmful, correct?

What do you mean it doesn’t happen? We can sequence the genome of a bear and a cat and see the differences. Are you denying reality?

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The point is, Star Wars writers can ignore gravitational theory but we cannot.

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I wish that was true for mosquitos. Of course, maybe the original was a really big sucker.

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Funny, since climate change is not a fraud.

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More likely, the original sucked on flowers exclusively.
https://www.mosquitosquad.com/west-st-louis-county/about-us/blog/2020/may/contrary-to-the-belief-of-many-mosquitoes-are-no/

I think that was implicit in my post, that it would require enough data to change laws and theories.

@Patrick_S Your responses are way far afield of the OP. That’s called derailing a thread and we discourage it. If you would like to discuss totally unrelated topics like climate change or Adam and Eve, you need to start new threads, not hijack this one. Further off-topic posts will be deleted.

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How could it be otherwise? Even if it could be shown that evolution could work as believed, there can be no proof that it ever happened in the past. That must be believed, unless you know every other possible cause and can prove they are wrong. No matter how creative the reasoning, evolution and God will come into conflict when it comes to origins. God claims to have created the heavens and the earth, and everything living here. Science cannot confirm or deny this, because, as a naturalistic endeavor, it cannot take the supernatural into account. It comes to a wall and stops there.

Perhaps.

In spite of the consistent failure of fundamental scientific predictions, there remains no doubt amongst evolutionists that evolution is a fact. Its high standing is underwritten by extremely powerful contrastive proofs which render its scientific puzzles less crucial. Those puzzles are interpreted as research questions, not challenges to the fact of evolution. That fact, for evolutionists, has already been established by the philosophy and theology that support evolution’s contrastive reasoning. From a strictly scientific perspective, evolution is not a good theory.

Thank you, @glipsnort Steve for this statement.

  1. There are more than one “theory of evolution.”
  2. Scientism is not good science.
  3. The Selfish Gene is a theory of evolution based on scientism.
  4. The Selfish Gene is NOT based on adaption to the environment, but the power of DNA…
    5, The Selfish Gene is not good science.

Only in a pointless and rather silly way… like saying there is more than one God, more than one United States, more than one law of gravity. There really is only one, even if there is more than one understanding of them, or more than one use of the words, and so on. But in reality the words refer to only one thing in the consensus and one scientific theory explaining the origin of the species.

from google

sci·en·tism
/ˈsīənˌtizəm/
noun RARE
thought or expression regarded as characteristic of scientists.
excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.

None of this makes much sense of your statement. How can it be bad science to think like a scientist or to believe in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques. Those would make for good science not bad.

It would make a great deal more sense to say something like “scientism is not a good life philosophy.” With that I couldn’t agree more. You cannot live your life as an objective observer – it takes subjective participation. Pretending otherwise is an out-and-out lie, self-deception at the very least.

“The Selfish Gene” is a book of popular science by an evolutionary biologist explaining evolution with added philosophy of Dawkins which is somewhat common among atheists, enshrining the value and universality of selfishness, as well as painting a picture of animate reductionism which is a bit odd and not great science either.

“There really is only one”

Hmm, why do you think then that RC pope John Paul II said, “to tell the truth, rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the theories of evolution”?
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/vaticanview.html

The popularity and usefulness of a bit of empty rhetoric doesn’t make it any more true.

Saying there is more than one theory of evolution because of usage in the social sciences is like saying there is more than one God because physicists have called the Higgs boson the God particle.

Taking a look at the link, I came across…

The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experiences in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

In other words, the Pope could live with evolution, so long as the process of “ensouling” humans was left to God.

That is another bit of Catholic/popular theology which I don’t agree with, unless we are talking about Genesis 2:7 and what made us human being. I don’t believe in any insertion of a soul into human bodies, but I do believe that the inspiration which came to A&E from God is what made us human and the children of God. This supports the idea of a contaminated inheritance version of original sin, which the pope (Pius XII) seemed to be concerned about.

It was also interesting that 46 years later Pope John Paul accepts evolution as an effectively proven fact. Even more interesting is the following…

Creationists, however, expressed dismay at the pontiff’s words and suggested that the initial news reports might have been based on a faulty translation. (John Paul gave the speech in French.) Perhaps, some creationists argued, the pope really said, “the theory evolution is more than one hypothesis,” not “the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis.” If that were so, the Pope might have been suggesting that there are multiple theories of evolution, and all of them might be wrong.

The “faulty translation” theory, however, suffered at least two problems. Most obviously, the theory collapsed when the Catholic News Service of the Vatican confirmed that the Pope did indeed mean “more than a hypothesis,” not “more than one hypothesis.”

It makes me wonder about your linking this, since we see our argument played out in miniature between the pope and the creationists.

A good portion of what follows is about Dawkin’s disdain for the position of the Pope on this matter employing wide swath of equivocation between mind and soul. Ok yeah, Dawkins, we know you are an atheist and we don’t care one way or another!

It sounds like you’re not aware of various theories of evolution, so you deny they could possibly exist. Yet that of course doesn’t make those various theories of evolution disappear, just because you contend they don’t exist. I’ll just stick with the evidence of multiple theories of evolution, over against such a claim otherwise from a physicist, thanks.

Unlike in your field of expertise, physics, in the social sciences and humanities it is quite common to run into “multiple competing hypotheses”. We’re not bothered by that the way you seem to be. This would drive physicists up the wall! Yet it’s standard fare in SSH & we’re not going to change our research methods and theories because some physicist demands we mimic their “objectivity”.

Please just accept one of the first questions in the field of “science studies”: Which science? Whose science? That may help with overcoming your current “There really is only one” attitude, when speaking outside of physics.

Oh, I am quite aware of the multiple competing paradigms in the soft sciences where actual evidence tends to be much harder to come by. But biology is on considerably more solid ground than that. I am also astounded by your equivocation between “theory” and “hypothesis” that is so typical of creationists!

I am also aware that there were at one time multiple competing hypotheses of evolution, like that of Lamark, for example. It doesn’t change the fact that there is only one theory of evolution, now accepted as scientific fact – not in the slightest.

Now you are being silly. What physicist makes any demands about how those in other fields conduct their work? LOL We only observe the rather obvious lack of objectivity, and the consequent blowing back and forth on the changing winds of subjective paradigms. Of course this doesn’t mean they don’t discover some solid facts in their work, and we enthusiastically acknowledge this when they do.

Ok, this is getting condescending and unwelcome on your part. Using the term “soft sciences” is commonly understood nowadays as a slur against scholars who have dedicated every bit as much “rigour” to their work as you have. Can I ask you please to reconsider using that outdated & condescending language, in light of the “gracious dialogue” intended here?

“It doesn’t change the fact that there is only one theory of evolution, now accepted as scientific fact – not in the slightest.”

That’s a minority position, and one I would suggest displays a tinge of fanaticism. Add to that you’ve made the audacious claim that evolutionary biology is what led you to Christianity. I would suggest that view & “experience” is so rare it almost doesn’t exist.

“What physicist makes any demands about how those in other fields conduct their work?”

Any physicist who operates interdisciplinarily understands that they cannot force their approach on fields which use different methods. Are you “unaware” or do you just “doubt” this happens?

Then again, the primary school-level teaching of “THE scientific method” has seemingly convinced not a few philosophically impoverished PhDs in physics that there’s only ONE method in Science. Since that’s not true either, you’re running low on confidences.

It has got more to do the availability of hard evidence and the recent history of the science. It is easy enough to point farther back in the history of the physical sciences when claims were more philosophical and measurements were also harder to obtain. It is the difficult nature of the subject matter and not the integrity of the scientists. This is in the context of the book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn which is complete nonsense when it comes to the physical sciences but is a better fit with the social sciences. But even then it becomes increasingly more flawed with the accumulation of hard evidence which no supposed revolution can alter.

I wouldn’t be surprised at such a claim, but no that is not my claim. What I said is that theory of evolution is the only reason I could see any truth in Christianity. Otherwise I would consider the problem of evil and suffering insurmountable and the atrocities in the Bible unconscionable. Those are frequent problems which people have with Christianity. I just think those criticisms don’t work when it is Christianity+evolution. Evolution tells us that suffering is a requirement of life, and the history in the Bible is no more terrible than the history of evolution.

Are you claiming that it does happen? Sounds like a rather bizarre idea to me… almost like the paranoia of an inferiority complex.

… that is only if you misunderstand the nature of the scientific method. It is not a procedure for doing science. It is about the methodological principles which differentiate science from rhetoric. And there is little reason for most PhDs in physics to even have an opinion on the matter. It is a question in the philosophy of science which is a different field altogether. You are firing off a lot of pot shots that are widely missing the mark here.

Like your equivocation between “theory” and “hypothesis” this attack on the scientific method is another favorite spiel of the creationists. Because of course they want their rhetoric accepted as science and it is definitely not anything of the sort.